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Pants - the antibiotic attack occurred to me last year, but I had no idea which one(s) to try and didn't have the patience (or money) to run through a bunch of them at random. So I appreciate that you've found one that works on ostreopsis.

Out of curiosity, do you think the antibiotic kills the dinos directly? Or does it kill symbiotic bacteria which indirectly results in the death of the dinos?

Not only bacteria but many other microorganisms like nematodes and ciliates. Skimmate is mainly water plus a Ca and Mg insoluble carbonates. It has no nitrate and little phosphate but can have SH2.

Snails keep pooping black crap for almost a week, that's the main drawback. Lol

Quote:

Originally Posted by Montireef

The next day I watched cristal clear water, higher redox and many black poop from my turbo snails (they love it). Corals extended awesome polyps two days after pouring it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Budman422

Do you think with adding the aged skimmate you are adding something to prey on and eat dinos. Maybe there is something to it. It kind of works like a culture

I would expect that is exactly what it does (works like a culture). The common observation is that water changes fuel dinos. Allowing the skimmate to culture limits the dinos access to added trace elements, and the dinos are food for the mystery microbes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lavoisier

Wow, this approach makes no sense to me. If you are right then skimmers are a detriment to water quality. I know there are a number of successful skimmerless systems but anecdotally there appear to be more systems that use skimmers successfully. We know the research confirms high quality skimmers take out about 30% of organic contaminants in our water columns. Why would you think returning those contaminants would be a good thing?

In this case where some unidentified microbe and dinos were both present in the tank, the skimmer acted as a sort of a condenser, allowing a high density sample of predator and prey to be segregated. I do the same thing when I culture pods (except I use a pipette ).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Montireef

Most contaminants taken out by skimmers are bad indeed, no doubt about that.

I have run a 125 gal skimmerless acropora system for more than two years with no issues at all, every coral was thriving despite I held three big angelfish (annularis, imperator and xanthometopon), a big japonicus, one flavescens and many small fishes. The only drawback was very unstable and every change should be done very slowly, specially changes in their diet.

The point here is not what the skimmer is taking out, but the microorganisms that compete and grow in the skimmate. Do you know what happens if you let the skimmate sit in the skimmer cup warm in a humid environment that prevent rapid evaporation? I'll tell you: the skimmate turns turbid clear, just like the water you could find in a pond.

The skimmate holds the most efficient bacteria and microorganisms you could imagine: nematodes, rotifers, cocos, spiros...and ciliates, many ciliates (with use to be omnivore creatures). This is what we just want: efficient selected microorganisms able to prey on dinoflagellates which are on the first trophic step.

Just place some GAC on your filter/mesh to remove the bad stuff and release the stinky waters back to the tank, I'm sure you will be surprised.

If the unknown microbe could be identified, it would go along way to help confirm the process that occurred in your tank.

It may be that tanks that get overrun with dinos have none of these types of predators, or that they are too specialized so they die off in some tanks. The suggestion that dinos seem to appear hand in hand with ULNS conditions, may also be related. The low nutrients may be taking out the predators that keep dinos in check, but unlike the predators, the dinos can encyst and wait for the predators extinction, and then grow to plague proportions without any biological controls.

This thread is this long because really nothing is a sure fire way to get rid of Dino's without burning the tank w/ bleach. Let the other algae take over along with Cyano. Once they outcompete the Dinos and starve them out then you can deal with them in normal fashions. Everything else is just unreliable and time consuming. This is from my experience.

Almost one month later I am spotting some ostreopsis cells on the microscope. They were gone, but now they are back.

Hmm, it will be interesting to see if the dinos are kept in check by the introduced organism, or if you are in for another round of dinos having the upperhand. Are you still seeing the protists in your samples with the dinos?

I would suspect that dinos are in most tanks, and only become an issue when the situation presents allowing them to bloom into plague proportions. So having (some) dinos may be a good thing, otherwise the dino predators may go the way of a nudi that runs out of aiptasia.

I would also suspect that it may be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Unless you can happen on a dino being vigorously attacked in a sample, it would be very hard to find the right organism. Even a 100 Gal tank would be like looking at a 40,000 gal tank when using a 400x magnification.

That is great! Now you just need to wait to see if your tank stays in balance with the protist keeping the dinos in check long term. Are you still dumping skimmate back into your tank or have you ceased after the dinos were dealt with?

Ok, 1 other question that was asked, but I am not sure if it was answered, do you know if the 2Kgs live of live rock you added was fresh or cured?

My tank does not have an issue with dinos, but I know that it is a real problem for a lot of people with complete teardowns often being the end result. So people in the future battling dinos, this *may* be an avenue that you wish to explore (adding a small bit of live rock). If you go this route, the re-addition of aged skimmate to the tank may also be part of the technique that is required for sucess (or it may just speed up what would have transpired eventually).

Please if you do try this, please update this thread with your results so that we can collect feedback if this works in a repeatable fashion.

I would suspect that not all added live rock will have the needed biological controls, especially if it has been hanging around in a LFS for how knows long. So the more reports of sucess or no effect that we can get, the better. Good luck.

ok so listen.... I JUST beat this stuff..... I've been having issues with it for a 3 months in my 200 gallon, i tore down my 90 gallon because of it in the past... i've done black out, no water changes, THE BEST HUSBANDRY, Hydrogen peroxide, etc..... I know i had dino because I confirmed it with a microscope.

a sure way that finally worked for me was this:
I cleaned out as much as i could as possible everyday... didn't do a water change for a month...

then one day i completely cleaned the tank the best i could with turkey basting, netting, etc. i cut the lights and covered my sps tank for 5 solid days. and i dosed FAUNA MARIN ULTRA ALGAE X EXCACTLY... i'm going to say EXACTLY one more time, as the manual describes. after 5 days all the algae was either gone or dead white. i kept dosing ultra algae x for a week after this stuff. it hasn't come back yet but i haven't done a water change either so you never know. i may still be in the boat. but there's literally no signs of it... i dosed after there were no signs as well. i just stopped 4 days ago. so the tank has been clean for 2 weeks

ok so listen.... I JUST beat this stuff..... I've been having issues with it for a 3 months in my 200 gallon, i tore down my 90 gallon because of it in the past... i've done black out, no water changes, THE BEST HUSBANDRY, Hydrogen peroxide, etc..... I know i had dino because I confirmed it with a microscope.

a sure way that finally worked for me was this:
I cleaned out as much as i could as possible everyday... didn't do a water change for a month...

then one day i completely cleaned the tank the best i could with turkey basting, netting, etc. i cut the lights and covered my sps tank for 5 solid days. and i dosed FAUNA MARIN ULTRA ALGAE X EXCACTLY... i'm going to say EXACTLY one more time, as the manual describes. after 5 days all the algae was either gone or dead white. i kept dosing ultra algae x for a week after this stuff. it hasn't come back yet but i haven't done a water change either so you never know. i may still be in the boat. but there's literally no signs of it... i dosed after there were no signs as well. i just stopped 4 days ago. so the tank has been clean for 2 weeks

I wish I had the time to do this to my tank. Full time student by night (MBA), stay at home dad by morning and early afternoon, part time work, and several other tanks, pets, wife, house duties.

It took 1 hour to clean it once and only once. 30 minutes to wrap once it and 3 minutes every other day to dose medicine..... How is that hard

1) I don't have time to sleep, let alone take apart an entire tank and **** off the inhabitants. Literally, I eat in to my sleep time for my daddy daycare time, work, and full time graduate school. Not enough hours in the day. On weekends, I am on full-time baby duty because the wife works. Have you tried to take apart a tank with a 10 month old?

ok so listen.... I JUST beat this stuff..... I've been having issues with it for a 3 months in my 200 gallon, i tore down my 90 gallon because of it in the past... i've done black out, no water changes, THE BEST HUSBANDRY, Hydrogen peroxide, etc..... I know i had dino because I confirmed it with a microscope.

a sure way that finally worked for me was this:
I cleaned out as much as i could as possible everyday... didn't do a water change for a month...

then one day i completely cleaned the tank the best i could with turkey basting, netting, etc. i cut the lights and covered my sps tank for 5 solid days. and i dosed FAUNA MARIN ULTRA ALGAE X EXCACTLY... i'm going to say EXACTLY one more time, as the manual describes. after 5 days all the algae was either gone or dead white. i kept dosing ultra algae x for a week after this stuff. it hasn't come back yet but i haven't done a water change either so you never know. i may still be in the boat. but there's literally no signs of it... i dosed after there were no signs as well. i just stopped 4 days ago. so the tank has been clean for 2 weeks

Hi Zack!

What kind of dinoflagellate did you have? There are many kinds, I know it works in some cases but I tried two months ago to get rid of my ostreopsis problem with no results at all.

This product only works with some kind of dinos, the same thing as Dinoxal.